


A 'Mikan' for Christmas

by wraithnoir



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Christmas Fluff, I just needed a tender moment for them, M/M, and I'm missing Japan myself right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithnoir/pseuds/wraithnoir
Summary: His first proper English Christmas with Thaniel makes Keita think about what winter in Japan was like.
Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	A 'Mikan' for Christmas

There were traditions that didn’t belong to him and he knew them anyway and performed them as expected. Which meant gifts wrapped in brown paper and eating a horrifying mound called pudding and, in a game both he and Six ended up observers rather than participants in, snatching almonds and currants out of the flickering blue flames that had erupted out of the brandy-doused plate when Thaniel gleefully ignited the thing. Snapdragon, Thaniel explained.

“Housefire,” Six commented, narrowing her eyes with obvious interest as she watched Thaniel, grinning, pulling a still-flaming almond out of the conflagration and popping it into his mouth.

“Idiot,” Mori commented softly before he realised that he was smiling in response to that boyish grin across from him. The fire was a little ghostly in the dark room, and it gave Thaniel a puckish look as it illuminated his features from below. 

“Baka?” Thaniel asked, eyebrows rakishly arched. It was a ridiculous and charming expression and Mori had to work not to laugh. 

“Baka,” he confirmed with a slow nod. Thaniel had snorted and grabbed up something else on fire from the plate. In his own mouth, Mori remembered the taste of the nuts and dried fruit and liquor without having eaten any of it and he knew it was from the Christmas-flavoured kisses he’d receive later. 

And that was all fine. Christmas was fine, Mori supposed, as far as it went. The pudding you could poke and watch bounce back, the greenery on the mantle and the bannister and on his workbench. The drawing game and the fire game and singing by the piano. The gifts they’d purchased and the gifts he’d made. Six’s squint over “Father Christmas,” who was really just “Dad” after bedtime stuffing candied nuts and oranges into her pitiful little stocking hung up by the fireplace (“We let an intruder come in and he touches my stockings?” she asked and Mori had slowly turned his head to let his gaze pointedly fall on Thaniel, who blinked twice and never answered, just went back to nailing up some holly without the use of a ladder, which was obscene.) . How quiet the city was on Christmas morning, and then it was all bells, and then quiet again.

“If we don’t celebrate Christmas,” Six asked in that particular tone that meant she was asking something she knew would be troublesome, “Are we heathens?”

“Where did you hear that, petal?” Thaniel asked as he walked back into the room, setting down a teacup by Mori’s arm that very clearly was not full of tea. 

“School,” she said succinctly, kneeling up from where she’d been playing with a set of mechanical pieces that could be fitted together to make increasingly strange little vehicles that also looked vaguely like sea creatures. It was about the closest to a toy she would come to enjoy. She sniffed at the cup on the table, noted it was alcohol-adjacent, and let her expression speak her disgust as she went back to her gifted set. 

Thaniel sipped his own cup with evident pleasure. Mulled wine, Mori recalled without asking. The Englishman had mentioned it a week earlier, and his intention to make it for Mori had grown every day. Now here it was. 

“Well...school can’t teach you everything. Heathen’s a...loaded word,” he said, settling back into his chair. 

“Mori, you don’t celebrate Christmas, do you?” she asked as if Thaniel had said nothing at all.

“No, I don’t. There aren’t many Christians in Japan, and there are other holidays we keep,” he answered. 

As he’d tasted the brandy and almonds earlier, now he remembered the brightness of citrus, the way the pips burst against the roof of his mouth when he pressed them against it with his tongue. The temple bells ringing at midnight and carrying across the lightly-powdered snow fields. 

“Shogatsu,” he continued, forgetting to leave room for the question. “The new year is our most important holiday.” The stacked mochi. The daidai perched neatly on top. A stolen fruit. Citrus in his mouth.

“Shouldn’t we celebrate that too? Dad?” Six turned her head almost impatiently. 

“It’s a day with no work and no school,” Thaniel smiled. “We’ll celebrate it. Kei, you haven’t tried your drink.” He leaned over and tapped on the table beside the cup. 

“What if I already remember hating it?” Mori asked, already reaching for the cup. 

“I’ll still be wounded if you don’t actually try it with your actual mouth.” His eyes promised other rewards with his actual mouth, and Mori met them for a moment without putting his guard up, then left Thaniel foundering when he took a sip. 

“My actual mouth doesn’t mind it.” It wasn’t a lie. It was strange to have it warm, this wine all simmered with cinnamon and lemon and anise and other spices. The memories of spices. 

“Can I have another tartlet, Dad?” Six asked, already walking over to the plate of them on the table. Her hand hovered over one of the apricot jam ones, her fingers practically twitching as she waited for permission. The silence pointedly coming from where the two adults sat made her sigh deeply. “Please.” 

“Of course, petal,” Thaniel said, still happily making the most of the mulled wine. 

Mori held the cup in both hands as you were not supposed to do with English teacups, the handle breaking up the true comfort of it, but he liked the way the warmth seeped through the porcelain and into his chilly fingers. Watching Thaniel watch Six enjoy her treat was like having sweetness himself, and while he didn’t smile openly the way Thaniel was or make an appreciative noise the way Six did (something they probably would have to train her out of, as that wasn’t exactly a social grace, even if he found it personally satisfying), he felt the sort of quiet comfortable that didn’t come to him often. 

Later that night, they picked up the remains of the day after Six had been put to bed with the promise of another tart with breakfast and her sea creature set arranged within view. Thaniel was on hands and knees trying to chase after a stray walnut that had fled under a chair when dropped. 

Mori rolled an orange hand-to-hand as he watched him. 

“Was it a good day?” he asked quietly, then winced just before Thaniel knocked his head on the chair as he tried to emerge.

“Ow!” Thaniel cursed under his breath, rubbing his head and sitting back on his heels. He was bright-eyed when he looked up at Mori though. “Yeah, I thought it was good. Even had snow...though it’s sort of a...grey mushy lot out there.” He wrinkled his nose, tossing the walnut up before catching it again. “Good day for you, Kei?”

“Well, I think this is my first proper Christmas, so yes.” He couldn’t say he didn’t have others to compare it to, but a first was always a pin in time. This was the first. 

“Right. Usually New Years for you, hmm?” Thaniel rose to his feet. “We should do that too. The way you would.” 

Mori’s smile was wry but he let himself be moved, be turned, by Thaniel’s hand on his elbow until he was looking up at the other man. “I don’t think that would be so easy. It would be a challenge to get the osechi, the kagami mochi, the daidai…”

Thaniel’s laugh was mild. “The what? Kei, you know I have no idea what any of that is. Throw me a wee bone?” 

He didn’t want to explain, Mori realised suddenly. He didn’t want to lay them out, his old traditions, the sound of the mochigome being pounded in the wooden tub, the bells ringing out to take the hundred and eight sins out of the souls of human beings, running outside in the cold to fly a fierce kite in the morning air, spinning the koma…

“Daidai,” he said simply, raising the orange between them. 

“Does that mean orange?” Thaniel asked, quirking a brow. “Now, I’m not the expert here, but you definitely told me it was mikan when we picked these up for Six.” 

Cleverer than he had any right to be. Mori ducked his head to hide his half-smile. 

“You’re right. This is a mikan. Daidai is…” He paused, then knew it the future. “A tangerine. But that’s close.” 

“You eat tangerines for New Year?” Thaniel asked, snugging Mori a little closer. The fire was low, the lamps were dimmed, they were mellow and warm with mulled wine. 

“We put them on top of the…” Here it went, the explanations. He wanted the day to exist without them. Mori shook his head. “I liked to steal them from the shrines. They’re auspicious.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not why you stole them,” Thaniel chuckled against his ear, and the sound made Mori close his eyes. He remembered that burst of shared citrus between them, an orange peeled and split but unfinished, the slices lying on the table and forgotten. When Thaniel kissed him now it was, as he’d known it would be, spices and the creamy sweetness of almonds. The orange would come later, and that was a comfort in itself.

“I have to finish the dishes,” Mori murmured and Thaniel sighed and released him. 

“I should lock up. I hate when you make me responsible.” He squeezed Mori’s forearm as he pulled away.

Mori could feel the house growing darker around him as Thaniel put out candles and lamps one by one, until only the kitchen was a bastion of light against the night. He knew where he was before he heard Thaniel’s boot step on the kitchen floor, and he had already changed his stance slightly to accept the press of his body behind him. He did not expect a sudden weight on him, a drop in each pocket of his jacket, one on each side. 

“What did you just do?” he demanded of Thaniel’s smile. 

Thaniel laughed and stepped back, holding his hands up innocently. “You act like I just went in on an assassination plot. Relax a bit! Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Mori set down the plate he’d been drying and plunged his right hand into his pocket...to pull out an orange. He looked questioningly at Thaniel as he pulled another out of his left pocket.

“I know, it’s not as fun as stealing them, and they’re not, what’s it, daidai, but I picked up a few extras when I noticed you looking at them longingly in the shop,” he said almost sheepishly. 

“I did not!”

“You did, but then I second-guessed myself and decided not to give them to you...but then when you just said all that about New Year...well, I think maybe it was a longing look after all,” he said easily. “We can save them for a week and eat them on the stroke of midnight, hmm?”

The years slid together as Mori’s arms slid over Thaniel’s shoulders, his hands still curved around the oranges. He’d known before he opened his gifts this morning, about the book he received as a Christmas gift, and the hair oil, and the handkerchief, even though Thaniel and Six had wrapped them up in brown paper, even though they’d known he would know, and here this man had surprised him regardless. How did he always do this? 

“Baka,” he whispered, thumbnail slicing through the orange rind and releasing the bright scent into the air. 

“You always know just what to say,” Thaniel laughed back. The scent lingered in the kitchen as they kissed, and it followed them up the stairs and into bed when Mori set his hand on Thaniel’s cheek and kissed him in the close quiet of Thaniel’s room and traced his thumb over his lower lip. And it followed them to sleep, warm and outside of time, when the bells, muted by snow, counted out slow hours above them.


End file.
